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Evolutionary Business Design

How to work smarter not harder this year

I walked into a hardware store one day.

There were 3 or 4 people standing behind the long counter and another 3 or 4 people in front of the counter waiting to be served. One bloke behind the counter looked like he was running rings around all the other guys– he was serving all the customers while the others stood idly by.

“He must be the guru.” I thought.

“Can I help you?” asked one employee.

“Yes, can I see the boss please?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s him” he said pointing to the guy doing all the work (without even asking what I needed and if he could help instead)

What’s wrong with this picture?

Can you see yourself in this scenario?

Business owners shoot themselves in the foot all the time by trying to do everything in their business. I’ve heard business owners variously describe themselves as “Chief Cook and Bottle-washer, “Trouble-shooter” and even “Dogsbody”. Some business owners even clean their own premises to save a few dollars – please tell me that’s not you!

If you feel like your business is dragging you down and you never seem to be getting to the good stuff it’s probably because you take on too much. For whatever reason, you’ve justified putting yourself in a position of power then undermined it by attempting to do everything yourself.

So, how are you going to get to the good stuff you want to do?

First of all, do you know what the “Good stuff” is? Have you actually defined what it is? You know there’s something … you just can’t quite put your finger on it, but other people seem to be having more fun and getting better results than you.

Or maybe you do know what you want but not the steps to get there – it seems too hard. Maybe there’s some fear and doubt and financial issues you have to tackle first, so it’s just easier to keep looking and being busy, (although it’s not very fulfilling) and every day is Groundhog Day. .

In order to work smarter you’ll need to know what it is you’re aiming for and what your particular role is in making it happen. This might take some courage and deep thinking – and delegation!

First of all – there is no such thing as a “good all-rounder”, so stop trying to be one.

You have natural talents and strengths you probably haven’t even tapped into yet.

Find the NICHE that suits your talents and makes you happy.

If you’re good at the technical work of your business like being the designer, accountant, mechanic or brain surgeon, then do that thing, but don’t keep it to yourself, hire and train other people to do it even better than you so you can expand the business.

OR – if you don’t want a large team and you are happy to be the technical person, focus on being the best brain surgeon you can be and get other people to do everything else; all the admin, marketing, sales, management and other parts of your business. Your hourly rate will be much higher than these people. Hire a great business manager or practice manager. Hire a great Personal Assistant – do whatever makes your job easier.

Remember to keep it simple and streamlined.

Find a MARKET that suits your talents and makes you happy.

When you work with clients or customers you like and you’re doing work that is your pure genius, then work doesn’t seem so hard, you’ll enjoy it more. Work becomes more harmonious – you have better capacity to deliver and the clients are less demanding, more flexible and understanding.

All clients are not created equal. It’s absolutely NOT true that “any client will do, as long as they pay.” Working smarter means choosing your clients; you’ll get paid on time, have fewer complaints, less re-work, fewer price shoppers and happier employees.

Be self focussed

The smart thing to do is look after yourself first, be a little selfish. If you fell over what would happen to your business?

There’s nothing wrong with drive and determination unless it becomes obsessive. Check your level of obsessiveness about your business. If it’s making you tired and sick it’s time to back it off a few notches.

Take a break, breathe. Not everything is urgent and important. Read Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People”. Apply what you learn, especially the part about sharpening the saw.

Seth Godin says “Do work worth doing”. Are you doing just enough to get by or are you really making a contribution? Do you need to change a few things? Stop being efficient – start being effective.

Work in your genius – Roger Hamilton’s Wealth Dynamics Wealth Profiling will help you discover your personal genius so you can work in flow.

Above all, give yourself time to do things. Set goals, break them down to small manageable bites, determine what your genius contribution towards achieving the goal will be, then work out who will help you.

Enjoy!

Discover your path to wealth by working in flow with your Natural Genius talents

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Wealth Dynamics in a nutshell

Many people think that there are hundreds of routes to wealth. With Wealth Dynamics, you’ll see that there are actually only eight paths to wealth and that one of those paths is the correct one for you.

These paths are highlighted by the successful people who have achieved wealth through following their natural path. This is to say, they found the wealth dynamic match that suited their talents.

Could you imagine Richard Branson as a footballer, or Bill Gates as a fish monger?

No, they discovered the talents they were born with and capitalized on them. They followed a path that they loved, their path of least resistance and they excelled at it. Wouldn’t you like to find your path, benefit from your natural strengths and excel?

Let’s take a brief look at each of these eight wealth profiles…

The Creator

The Creators can’t help creating! They are good at creating profitable ideas and businesses, but not so good with the day to day running of a business. Successful creators will delegate everything, except the creative process. Example: Walt Disney

The Mechanic

Mechanics are perfectionists who like to finish things, rather than create them. They want to make everything better – fine tune them. Example: Henry Ford.

The Star

It is easy to spot a star. Obviously, you have film, music and sports stars, but high profile CEOs can also be thought of stars. They rely on the strength of their personality and are aware of the pressure of always having to deliver. Example: Oprah Winfrey

The Supporter

Supporters are great networkers with loads of energy and enthusiasm. Their greatest wealth can be achieved when they join forces with a Star, Creator, Deal Maker, or Mechanic. Example: Steve Ballmer

The Deal Maker

A deal maker relies on relationships, connections and being able to react intuitively when the best opportunities present themselves. Example: Donald Trump

The Trader

A trader is someone who naturally hunts out bargains, naturally loves haggling and gets immense satisfaction from a great deal. They are equally as good at finding high price buyers. Example: George Soros

The Accumulator

Incremental growth is the key to this wealth dynamics profile. They are patient, disciplined and will stick fast to a successful system. Example: Warren Buffet

The Lord

The Lord likes to control everything. You can find a lord where there are fixed assets generating cash. They don’t want attention like the stars and like to create wealth quietly. Example: Ingvar Kamprad

These carefully thought out profiles are the result of years of studying the approaches of hundreds of successful wealth creators combined with Chinese philosophy.

Knowing which of these wealth profiles is yours, is like having the keys to the vault of the Bank Of England.

More than 250,000 entrepreneurs have already found their true profile and are discovering, with amazing clarity the direction towards true wealth for them.

Would you like to join them? CLICK HERE to take the test.

Pauline Bright is an accredited Wealth Dynamics Profile consultant. To book a Debrief and Discovery session once you’ve done your profile, please email support@brightbusiness.net.au or call 0413 739 196. You’ll find out how to use your profile in your current business or situation and what is the right path for you to follow.

The best ways to grow your customer database without spending a fortune

Size. Isn’t. Everything. When it comes to a customer database, having thousands of thousands of people on a list doesn’t mean anything unless you have a relationship with them.

So don’t go getting all scammy and spammy with the latest tricks to build a list of people who are not now, or never will be, your ideal customer. You’ll find no joy there.

A small intimate responsive database can be a beautiful thing and it’s really enjoyable to serve those people by offering them interesting relevant information, intriguing offers and genuinely helpful content that they can’t wait to receive. Develop a “No Junk Mail” policy when you contact your database or they will bin you for wasting their time.

Here’s how to grow your list without resorting to sneaky underhanded tactics.

You cannot just put someone on your list because they gave you their business card – you’ll need to ask permission. But better than that, have a real conversation with the person and offer to send them something helpful – and NO that is not your brochure or catalogue unless they have specifically asked for it. It might be a newspaper clipping or a referral to your dentist or a great website you discovered. It can be anything as long as it is helpful.

If you were clever you’d be building a bank of your own useful information to share.

Here are a few favourite places and ways to find the best people to add to your database:

  • Networking events and industry groups – local chambers of commerce are a good place to start.
  • Business networking groups – go regularly and make friends. Get to know these people, they are your best referral sources and there are things you can help them with too.
  • Meetup Groups cost next to nothing – choose carefully before you commit the time but you will definitely meet people – even if it’s a walking group.
  • Attend workshops and chat to the people you meet there. There are plenty of low-cost- to- no-cost business seminars out there – and you’ll learn a thing or two as well!
  • Online in social media groups – find groups with similar interests to yours and start contributing. But don’t sell unless the rules of the group say you can – it’s SOCIAL – no-one likes a pushy person who is always selling.
  • On holidays, at the shops, in elevators, at the beach – start talking to people – you’ll be so surprised at the connections you can make.
  • Have a lead capture form on your website – offer something they consider valuable and highly desirable in exchange for their contact information. It might cost you nothing.
  • Do direct response marketing – everything you put out needs a call to action to get the person to take some action i.e. contact you for that highly desirable “thing” – not the super big things, just a little taste test. Why do you think supermarkets offer free samples of something yummy in the aisles?
  • As people to share your content, your business cards, your highly desirable offer, let it go naturally viral. If you are in the women’s market you have inbuilt viral marketers. They will naturally tell friends when they find something of value.
  • Get over your nerves and learn to speak in public – give talks and presentations. When people see you as an expert they’ll give you their contact details to get more of what you have.

We’ve just scratched the surface.

You’re only limited by your imagination. Get together with a group of other business owners and brainstorm this – there are hundreds more answers. Then put the strategies into action and hold each other accountable to getting results.

Best of luck. Let us know how you go. And if you have a unique way of adding genuinely interested people to your database, we’d love to hear it.

Why a coach’s perspective is so important when you want to expand your business

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“You know what you should do?”

…and so it starts again… the well-meaning but often unsought advice from someone who really doesn’t have a clue about your business.

“Here’s what I’d do if I were you…”, but they’re not you are they?

Everyone’s got an opinion – even people you’ve just met – and they’re more than happy to share it. But who do you listen to and trust enough to give you the right advice?

Unfortunately a lot of well-meaning advice gets tainted with emotion; friends and family want to see you do well, but they worry that you are overworking and not looking after yourself. They want to keep you safe.

They want you to be successful but maybe not too successful in case they lose you! You might get big and rich and famous and leave them behind!

Unless you’re getting business help and advice from a respected successful impartial friend or family member (which is amazingly brilliant and rare – lucky you!) then you’ll need to filter out the noise and concentrate on what YOU want.

So, why would you listen to a coach – aren’t they just another voice in the noise?

Well, the role of your coach is NOT to give you advice.

A really good coach is impartial, has no emotional stake in the business and will listen, guide and reflect back to you everything you need to get ahead. You already have most of the answers – you just don’t know that you do until your coach asks some key questions and keeps digging to get to the heart of things.

A good coach will educate you so that you can make informed decisions – but they won’t make the decisions for you.

If your coach has also walked a mile in your shoes before you, in their own business and life experience, then they may act as a mentor to show you what worked or didn’t work for them, but they won’t do it for you.

A good coach will see you as you are in the moment, without any of the life baggage you may be carrying around, and will be able to tap into your vision for the future, often stretching you way beyond what you thought you were capable of.

As Les Brown says “You have Greatness in you!” Why would you settle for mediocrity?

A good coach doesn’t take any BS – no excuses, no counselling, no jumping the fence to have a pity party with you. Sure, we’re tough but we’re compassionate, we can have a laugh, and we SEE you – I mean really SEE you – the best version of yourself.

We don’t dawdle; we like plenty of movement and momentum – as they say in kindy “You can have fun, but you’ve gotta get it done”.

A really good business coach is well versed in business – not just finance or sales or marketing or systems or HR – but ALL of the aspects of business and how it all fits and glides together.

It’s very likely there are some holes in your business – maybe you’re aware of them, maybe you don’t know what you don’t know.

Shall we go digging together to see what you don’t see right now?

CLICK HERE – a 15 min phone call may change your life!

The secret to being a successful business owner

Congratulations! You’re a rare breed.

If you measure success by the dictionary definition of “the favourable outcome of something attempted”, then owning a business could be considered a success, because there are many more who think about being a business owner than follow through to buy or start a business.

But how do YOU measure success?

Is it measured in money, prestige, toys, lifestyle, contribution, customers or reputation?

Who’s doing the measuring?

Are these your measurements or are you succumbing to external forces telling you what success “should” look like?

From the outside your business could look spectacularly successful.  However you could be sitting in your business right now not feeling particularly proud and successful – especially if things are not going the way you imagined they would.

Working closely with hundreds of business owners over more than a decade here’s what defines success for them.

Which ones apply to you?

  • I get out of bed each day with enthusiasm and energy – I enjoy my business
  • I’m happy with the direction in which my business is headed
  • I’ve made mistakes and learnt from them. I get up when knocked down
  • I constantly learn and implement new ideas and ways of doing business
  • I have good people around me to help run sections the business
  • I feel good about the products/services we deliver
  • I have brightness of future. I’m confident we’re on the right track
  • I have a good support network in my business community
  • My business is agile, flexible and not heavily weighed down by outside influences
  • My business pays me properly for my efforts
  • My business has a good reputation
  • I’m doing work worth doing, it has value
  • My time is flexible enough to allow me to enjoy life
  • My business is growing. I have an asset that has value now and in the future
  • I have the right balance of work and play. I have time to myself and with my family
  • I have defined my boundaries of what I will and won’t do
  • I choose my customers
  • The business is under control; it has systems that make it work well
  • My business makes a valuable contribution to my community
  • I have a business that gives me a good life

Please feel free to add your own success criteria.

Celebrate what you DO have. Every business is a work-in-progress. Don’t feel bad about the things you don’t have right now. Make a note of them and work on the most important ones that have meaning for you.

There is no ONE secret – it’s a collection of criteria that gives you a feeling of pride and sense of achievement.

The secret to being a successful business owner is whatever you say it is.

What is it for you?